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California drought? What’s the answer to increased food costs?

If you’re following the news, California is in a severe drought which is projected to increase our food prices significantly. Two top ideas radically decrease the cost of your green smoothies and whole-foods lifestyle. One, it’s not too late to significantly decrease the effect of the drought on your family: plant late-summer and fall gardens.

Second, have a freezer to put extra greens in, for the winter, for your smoothies, as well as cut-up peaches when they come on in August. It’s an important investment in your health and preparedness. I like to cube and freeze watermelon to use in a January GSG Detox! (We have two days of kidney detoxification where we eat all watermelon—you can partially thaw frozen watermelon for delicious blended smoothies all day. Your Detox Buddy will be so jealous, so freeze some for her, too.) Then you won’t be at the mercy of lousy-tasting, winter watermelon if you can even get it.

We’ll be doing a live GSG Detox on Aug.1, by the way! More on that soon, but learn more about the GSG Detox and sign up before then, HERE. The average person loses almost 13 lbs. and detoxifies colon, lymph, blood, liver, kidneys and gall bladder so they can serve you with increased efficiency and energy!

I teach you how to garden, in any space, organically, and use everything in your garden deliciously in ways you might not have thought of, in Step 5 of 12 Steps to Whole Foods.

Here is my YouTube video showing my compost boxes, easy to do, and helps you send almost nothing to the landfill, and lets you use your fruit/veggie scraps to nourish your next cycle in your garden!

Here’s another one of me in my garden from long ago, talking about how green smoothies are cheap when you garden!

GSG Operations Manager Nikki says she gets free beet greens and turnip greens at a community garden if you volunteer. Her community garden throws out most all the beet and turnip greens, keeping only the vegetable, because people don’t know those greens are great in smoothies!

Just for fun, here’s another older video about how I work with my kids in the kitchen and the garden—nostalgic to see how my now-teenaged youngest kids loved to help me.

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Yes, California is in a drought, but the reason most of our reservoir levels are as low as they are is due to the releases of early season storm waters for flood control reasons, not drought. These releases were made to make room for subsequent storm events, which did not materialize. We need to decide whether we want to maximize flood protection or have water available for our use and/or for agriculture. Flood control or food and water, an interesting dilemma.

Folsom Lake is a reservoir often cited as an example of the severe drought. The reality is the lake could have been full two out of the past three drought years, and at least double the storage going into this past year. With a capacity of about 1,000,000 ac-ft of water, that amount or more was discharged during each or the past three years of severe drought, and most of the discharges occurred early in the water season.

I live in Virginia, but I wonder if the extensive fracking operations in California have affected the water quality yet (similar to what’s happening in TX and PA (i.e. lighting tap water on fire with a match). Also I know that fracking uses tremendous quantities of water. It seems like a irresponsible thing to do – drought or no drought.

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GreenSmoothieGirl founder Robyn Openshaw’s passion for educating people about diet and nutrition arose from her own personal journey. 20 years ago, Robyn weighed over 200 pounds and had 21 chronic diseases.

Getting off the Standard American Diet proved a lifesaver. Robyn lost 70 pounds without dieting, by converting to a whole-foods, mostly plant-based diet. Twenty years later, she is a competitive athlete, free of all disease and symptoms, and at her ideal weight.